Heloise & Abelard : A New Biography

Rating:
Summary: Scholarly... but still fun and interesting to read.
Review: Forget Romeo and Juliet... this is the real deal.

A brilliant up-and-coming philosopher is hired to tutor the equaly brilliant young niece of a powerful man... what should ensue but a story that involves love, romance, a nighttime escape with both lovers dressed as nuns, the birth of a child, and a brutal act of revenge that will make men everywhere wince.

Anyone who studied medieval history in college knows of the letters of Abelard and Heloise... the research for this book is based upon not only the original 8 that made their story famous, but also upon what the author believes to be a newly discovered cache of letters between the lovers. He makes a convincing case for the legitimacy of these new letters, and offers a much more thorough analysis of the story, the characters, and the major events of the period than exists elsewhere.

The author does a wonderful not only telling the story, but also putting it into historical context. This is a truly powerful story of unrequeited love that has fascinated historians and lay people alike for centuries, but it is also a very interesting history of a crucial period in Church history and in the history of Western Europe. The first whispers of the reformation are being heard, the Church is starting to punish heresy in very serious ways, and many of the social, religious, and educational institutions are being questioned. The modern reader might be particularly interested in the life that Heloise makes for herself: her career trajectory might come as a surprise to those who think that, except for the occasional queen, women were completely powerless in medieval European society.

This book provides a very well researched and well written study of two people stuck in a situation that is much greater than either of them, and of the repurcussions that follow their affair. It offers a very interesting examination of the state of philisophy and religious thought of the period. I highly recomend it to anyone who is interested in medieval history, church history, or women's history... or to anyone who is interested in reading about the greatest love story of all time.

Rating:
Summary: Scholarly
Review: James Burge's uptodate examination of the lives and letters of the twelfth century tragic lovers, Heloise and Abelard, is a superb piece of scholarship. With an examination of both the original attributed letters and the excerpts now identified as from their original love letters collated by Johannes de Vepria and first revealed by Constant Mews in 1999, Burge takes us through the known lives of the two ill-fated lovers whilst continually instructing the reader on twelfth century european monastic life and the firm secular power that the Church weilded through its canonical law.
The story of Abelard and Heloise (he the greatest logiical philosopher of his age, she a brilliant classical scholar some ten years his junior) who fall in love whilst she studies under him in Paris, their subsequent hasty and secretive marriage, the birth of their child Astralabe, Aberlard's subsequent castration by Heloise envious uncle, Fulbert and their enforced separation to the Orders and literary reconciliation, has echoed down the ages.
The Romeo and Juliet of its time, the erudite, first hand accounts of an altogether human love between two great intellectuals opens up the world of twelfth century europe to us in a way that is priceless. As Burge correctly comments fairly early in the text, the concept of the period being part of the medieval ages and pre-renaissance is farcical in the evidence of the Parisian centres of learning that Abelard founded and taught at.
Drawing heavily on the texts, Burge gives us an insight into the personalities of both, showing Abelard as that brilliant, yet socially aggressive, scholar, Heloise as his intellectually equal, yet through what modern terms would denote as `true love', utterly under his charming spell right to the end.
The primary source material consists of eight letters, opening with a letter from Aberlard to an unknown correspondent in response to several meetings he has had, putting down what is almost an autobiography. The letter (or a copy) makes its way to Heloise who writes a reply, thus reopening communication between the two. Whilst the opening 200 pages refer heavily to the first letter of each, as Burge's biography catches up with Aberlard's abscondment from St Denis and sojourn near St Troyes at Paraclete then the remaining six letters come into force. Ableard's papal-acknowledged bestowal on Paraclete to Heloise to found her abbey means that the two came into contact and through the letters we are able to see Heloise 'force' Abelard to acknowledge that he is her first true love and her taking the veil was enforced by him upon her.
Burge now continues to move through the later stages of Abelard's life, continuing to note his cyclic fortunes, waxing and waning with Stephen de Garlande until the latter finally fell from grace as Bernard de Clairvaux rose to European political pre-eminence and the former finally returned to Paris. In a change of style Burge spends several pages discussing the themes within the hymns of Abelard, a literary examination amongst the historical investigation before reverting to discussions of Abelard's fighting with Clairvaux and the famous Council of Sens where the latter's brilliant rhetoric won the minds of the 'jurors' rendering Abelard speechless. Abelard ended his days condemned for heretical discouse, eventually dying whilst under the hospitality of Abbot Peter and with his death so the story peters out quite quickly, a few pages remaining to briefly cover what little we know of the remaining third of Heloise's life, and some of the known actions of their son before even more quickly covering their escalation within the French national identity and final resting place in Paris together.
Burge's work excels in bringing the story, the period and the nature of the philosophy to the reader in a manner that is both readable, informative and deeply stimulating. It is the kind of secondary text that would inspire a reader to go out and purchase the original texts of these brilliant twelfth cenutry lovers and read even further around the entires scope of twelfth century european religion, politics and philosophy. At the same time it does not lose its emotive discussion, humanising both of these people and making their tragic love story rise fresh to a new century of people. This book is highly recommended.

Rating:
Summary: New Light on the Classic Lovers
Review: Shakespeare immortalized the fictional lovers Romeo and Juliet, but for historic doomed lovers, readers have always gone to the story of Heloise and Abelard. The letters between them, written in twelfth century France, are flirtatious, intellectual, dramatic, tragic, and erotic. The world for centuries has been fascinated by the eight letters exchanged by them when they were forced to be apart, but then a few years ago emerged a cache of letters they sent each other while they were also having passionate physical and intellectual exchanges. James Burge has drawn upon the letters old and new to produce _Heloise & Abelard: A New Biography: (HarperSanFrancisco) which is a genial guide to the classic story, a thoughtful and affecting work that explains the times, religion, and politics of a vastly different age. No American reader, however, will come away without thinking about the current influence of conservative or restrictive religious ideals, or of the continued desire of those in power to impose moral values.

In 1115 Abelard was 36 years old, a teacher of logic and master of the Cathedral School at Notre Dame in Paris. Heloise was fifteen years younger when they met. She was the niece of a local Parisian canon named Fulbert, and she came to the attention of Abelard because of her learning and her desire to learn. She became Abelard's pupil, and then his mistress. Even though they spent a lot of time in personal tutorials, they wrote letters to each other. Abelard wrote, "Our desires left no stage of lovemaking untried, and if love could devise something new we welcomed it." Heloise was consumed as well; this couple enjoyed their intellectual exchanges, enjoyed romance, but they really enjoyed sex. At least one time they made love in the refectory of a church. Years later, looking back on the torrid year and a half of their affair, Heloise wrote even as an abbess, "The lovers' pleasures that we enjoyed together were so sweet to me that they can never displease me." When Fulbert found out about the affair, he threw Abelard out, and when Heloise became pregnant, he forced them to get married. It would seem that Fulbert would have been satisfied with the outcome he had engineered, but he was still enraged at the loss of his family's honor, and perhaps at the loss of Heloise as well. He sent his henchmen out to Abelard's house one night, and they castrated him. Abelard became a monk and made Heloise become a nun.

He preceded her in death, when his body was taken back to the crypt of the little church of Heloise's abbey, and she was eventually buried there as well. The Paraclete did not survive the French Revolution, but the lovers' remains were brought back to Paris and became initial celebrity occupants of the newly formed Pére Lachaise cemetery. It may be that the graves of Oscar Wilde and Jim Morrison get more visits there now, but the Gothic Revival monument of Abelard and Heloise does not lack for flowers brought by those captivated by a romantic and frankly sexual story. Burge has been careful to set quotations from the letters in the circumstances of their times. There are, sadly, huge gaps in the story, years we do not know about and thoughts that even these prolific pen-pals kept to themselves; Burge has always indicated when he is making suppositions. He is particularly strong on church history and thought, especially contrasted with the words of Heloise who joined a religious to a sexual rapture. There can be no doubt that these two were serious thinkers and soundly Christian, but theirs was a strikingly modern faith that could accommodate desire and eroticism.